Economics

Mike Ford, reviewing Laurence Peter's "Peter Principle," the concept that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence," introduces a more encouraging spiritual Peter Principle, based on the life and experiences of the apostle Peter, who learned that, as one uses the power provided by God's Holy Spirit, even one who has previously failed miserably can rise to astounding levels of spiritual competence. God has given His people, the weak of the world, spiritual gifts, which, if used to edify others, will lead to a yet higher level of gifting. We are all stewards or managers of God's property. If we are vigilant, God will reward us for our stewardship. When we use our gifts to edify others, we demonstrate responsibility, but when we use them selfishly to glorify ourselves, we act irresponsibly. Many politicians and civil servants demonstrate fiscal incompetence, wasting taxpayer's money. As stewards of God's property, we dare not emulate irresponsible administrators. We do not know when our Master will return, but we do know: (1) If we get puffed up with pride, we will let prayer and Bible study slip through the cracks. (2) If we watch the clock rather than take care of business, we are unproductive servants. (3) If we are more concerned about the faults of our spiritual siblings than faithfully cultivating our spiritual gifts, we become busybodies. If we apply the spiritual Peter Principle, using God's spiritual gifts to edify others, we will continue to grow spiritually.

John Ritenbaugh, relating some insights from economist Gary North, an unusually religious man who has authored (or co-authored) over 60 books, all demonstrating a clear support of biblically-based law and economics, examines some of the causes of poverty and scarcity, concluding that material wealth is an inaccurate gauge of success and real wealth. North, endorsing the biblical work ethic, insists that, unless one works hard and sagaciously, scarcity and poverty will inexorably ensue. The rich young ruler and British oil magnate J. Paul Getty were wealthy by the standards of this world, yet poverty-stricken when it came to happiness because they were slaves to their wealth. In essence, they did not possess wealth, but wealth possessed them. God does not measure prosperity by the ownership of physical possessions but with the depth of a person's relationship with Him.

Richard Ritenbaugh, examining the impact of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman on world events and prophecy, states that this 22-year-old prince continues to make massive reforms in Saudi Arabia. These reforms include crackdowns on the hard-liner Muslim fundamentalists (hoping to end long-held taboos prohibiting women from driving cars, patriarchal guardianship lows and extremist interpretations of the Coran), attempts to move toward a more moderate, secular flavor of Islam and the development of banking and accounting policies favorable to garnering foreign investment. He believes the lure of Jihad can be defused by allowing entertainment, preventing young people from becoming bored. The prince is disenchanted by the loss of the work-ethic caused by the adoption of socialist policies and wants to eliminate the prevailing entitlement mentality currently plaguing the nation. Prince Mohammed has given the fundamentalist, cleric-influenced regime an intense severe punch in the solar plexus, but historically these solidly entrenched curmudgeons have counterpunched with fury when backed into the corner. We most certainly live in exciting times!

Martin Collins, continuing the "Money has Failed" series, contends that the move to a cashless society, in which the "bankster" elites have greedily commenced stealing the true physical wealth of society, replacing it with relatively worthless Federal Reserve Notes ('promissory' I.O.U.'s), will drastically drive up inflation, causing bankruptcies and foreclosures on a massive scale.The price of food has risen 8% annually, making it impossible to fill up a grocery cart for under $100 today. For example, the price of ground beef has risen 45%, a loaf of bread 39%, apples 36%, salt 34%, and vegetables 33.7%. Today, the inflated Federal Reserve Note is worth about 3 cents on the dollar since the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. Because of the disastrous process of quantitative easing (the continuous frenetic printing of valueless paper notes), the resultant damage appears beyond repair. National debt, hyperinflation, and negative interest rates for savings have burgeoned worldwide. God's people need to prepare for this impending disaster by getting out of debt as quickly as possible, and put effort into obeying God, valuing spiritual satisfaction above physical satisfaction.

Martin Collins observes that the Globalist war on cash is underway with the ultimate objective of taking away freedom and privacy for all. Though Globalists claim that the target of these measures are drug dealers and black market arms merchants, their true target is control of the world's wealth, 'legitimatizing' their right to steal the wealth of all the unsuspecting citizenry through electronic manipulation, maliciously controlling or 'regulating' what people can buy or sell. Consequently, the Globalist "banksters" can track all our purchases, can freeze our accounts for any reason, can levy confiscatory fees or taxes, can impose negative interest rates on our savings, and can confiscate all currency and re-issue less valuable electronic currency, driving up inflation, and destroy our privacy, eerily similar to the Mark of the Beast of Revelation 13.

Martin Collins, describing the nefarious plan of the world's banking institutions to pull nations into a cashless society, suggests that these institutions have accomplished their goals incrementally, by eliminating larger banknotes, as well as restricting how much cash can be used on a single purchase, or limiting the amount of cash one may withdraw. Ostensibly, the reasons given for these measures are noble—to safeguard the public from criminal elements trafficking in weapons or drugs. The cashless scheme has spread its tentacles to Venezuela, Australia, France, Greece, Spain, Israel, Turkey, Cyprus, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and will soon be coming to a bank near you. In this 'post-truth' era, we need to beware of "Greeks bearing gifts," realizing that the motives of those finance corporations who desire to create a cashless society are not pure; behind them lurks the sinister goal of controlling and stealing, rather than providing security. We may be approaching the time when the cash literally has failed (Genesis 47:14) as a result of the world's governments abandonment of their God -given duty to protect their citizenry, ultimately turning them into little more than penned and herded cattle.

Martin Collins, claiming that economists often refer to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe because it portrays a lone man facing a scarcity in economic goods without any means of exchange of value, suggests that one in such a situation will prioritize his needs in a hierarchy of value. In a world of limited resources, a person should make decisions as to how to achieve his goals. What would we do if we had no money? When it comes to eating or starving, money has no value compared to food. During the famine in Egypt, the value of money had fallen to zero. When there is no bread, the one who has bread can buy anything of value with it. One will sell himself into slavery for a morsel of life-sustaining food. The Patriarch Joseph bought all land and resources for the Egyptian Pharaoh by exchanging food for other material resources. Grain became the new form of money. Whatever everybody wants is true money. Today, cash has value; next year that may not be. Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economist and champion of the Federal Reserve System, has seriously proposed a phasing out of cash because of the lack of centralized control. Electronic cash would make taxation and confiscation easier, facilities 'progressive' authoritarian regimes have always loved. Some governments around the world, such as the Indian government, have started to phase out cash, instigating massive panics and riots at ATM machines. The price of gold immediately skyrocketed. The India government wants to move its citizenry to a cashless society so it can control every aspect of its peoples' lives by its chokehold on the digital banking system. Failed money is the same as unmarketable money. Digital currency severely limits freedom of movement and choices, tethering one to immense authoritarian government control by elite, unelected globalist brigands.

Germany is in a bind. It is an industrial powerhouse, the richest economy in Europe, but it must prop up several poor-performing economies throughout the rest of the European Union. Berlin cannot continue this practice lest they drag it down with them. David Grabbe warns that Germany's decisions on these matters could have far-reaching consequences for Europe and the rest of the world.

John Ritenbaugh, observing a gigantic chasm between conservative talk radio, alternative media, and the 'official' Federal Government's portrayal of the American economy, concludes that the Obama Administration's calculations of economic indicators are not only full of equivocation and sleight of hand, but also weighed down by shameless prevarication. The rosy 5% unemployment figure touted by the government is deceitfully achieved by counting a plethora of part-time entry-level jobs, enough to provide spending money for teenagers but not enough to support a family, under-employed workers compelled to make ends meet by cutting the neighbor's grass or driving Uber taxis, and tens of thousands of unemployed people who have given up looking. Government statisticians and economists smugly count people working 30 hours a week at a minimum wage as fully employed. The real statistics, suppressed by the government-controlled media, bare the truth that only 41percent are employed, with most people skimping by, succumbing to indebtedness. Not even considering the shameful national debt amassed by the current Administration, personal indebtedness is now in the trillions of dollars: College students owe one trillion dollars in accumulated tuition debt, while millions of Americans will never fully "catch up on the credit card debt. A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly exposed the fragility of the disappearing middle class, suggesting that most Americans, because of governmental economic policy, are so cash poor that they could not scrape $400 together for an unexpected bill unless they sold something or borrowed money from a friend or relative. 47% of the American citizenry are dependents of the Federal government, which sadly, because of gross incompetency, is also cash poor. Most of our citizenry is ignorant about the causes of this demise, failing to realize that God is plaguing this nation for its blatant, calloused sin.

Charles Whitaker: In John 2:13-17, the apostle John records Christ's cleansing of the Temple near the commencement of His ministry: "Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem...."

Richard Ritenbaugh points out that Barack Obama has steadfastly endorsed the Marxist policy of redistribution of wealth, insisting that the government take from the successful and give to the indigent through confiscatory taxation. Since 47% of the populace has been rendered government dependents, the current administration is on its way to impose these Robin Hood or Marxist policies. Redistribution programs, wherever attempted by communist or socialist regimes, have been total failures, permanently destroying the incentive and productivity of the people. When government demands that the wealthy give to the poor, the wealthy stop being productive and take their productivity to a more humane location. Government redistribution hurts everybody, creating shared misery. The leftist progressives claim that socialism is advocated by Jesus Christ who said we should give the poor. The Bible does not teach equality; economic disparity is presented as a given. Scriptures teach that we should voluntarily help the poor, but never criminally coerced by a tyrannical government. Paul's example of maintaining his tentmaking skills, not demanding his benefits from the Corinthian church, demonstrates that we also should not assume an entitlement attitude. Jesus Christ warns against self-exalted or hypocritical charity, but counsels that it should come from the core of our character. Marxist socialists, with their warped concept of a zero sum game, mistakenly assume that disparity of wealth is caused by the rich stealing from the downtrodden. Socialists desire to take from the wealthy and give to the poor, creating equality. The Bible does not teach equality, but equity. Whereas quality is sameness or uniformity, equity is impartiality, justice, and legal fairness without any trace of favoritism or bribery. Socialist equality mandates sameness of outcomes, with everyone wearing the same gray Maoist jumpsuit a grim evenness with everyone suffering equally. God does not treat everyone equally. Life is full of reversals teaching

These days, the price of gasoline always seems to be heading up rather than down. However, new discoveries of large oil and gas deposits around the world reveal that we will not be running out of oil soon. David Grabbe documents that much of this newly found oil is difficult and costly to extract, and political and economic factors keep the price—and tensions—high.

With both the United States and Europe dealing with an impending financial disaster, the world today is full of economic news. Economic terms and philosophies are common knowledge to many. While many doubters think that the Bible is not sophisticated enough to comment on such modern ideas, Richard Ritenbaugh explains that God's Word does indeed factor economics into the end-time equation in its prophecies.

Richard Ritenbaugh suggests that the death of capitalism has been coming incrementally in the past two decades, but the deleterious drive toward socialism has increased exponentially under the Obama administration, rewarding liberal action groups with 'porculus giganticus,' radically distributing the wealth, basically "evening the score" for the downtrodden, destroying capitalism in the process, replacing it with a form of statist tyranny, insuring a decrease of real wealth. Capitalism is based on the ability to own land, making it possible to produce wealth, enabling each person to be in control of his own destiny. In the new socialist economic system, we are becoming economic marionettes on strings, controlled by a tyranical statist regime, perhaps a pre-cursor to the beast.

John Ritenbaugh, continuing to differentiate biblical liberalism with the vile meaning the leftist Democrat party has given it, namely crushing personal liberties in favor of government tyranny, notes that proponents of this position are atheist or agnostic, denying all moral absolutes. A true modern liberal will invariably choose the wrong choice. The woman who jumped into the polar bear cage took the wrong fork and got herself seriously mauled. Likewise, the economic demise was caused by wrong choices made by bankers (behaving as shameless prostitutes acting like the seductress in Proverbs 7) hoping to make a profit. Modern liberalism is actually the oldest form of deception on the face of the earth initiated by Satan's Ponzi scheme glommed onto by our parents Adam and Eve, taking the wrong fork.

John Ritenbaugh, observing that the news of Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Israel has diminished, suggests that the economic woes of America have taken over in the news. Economist Martin Weiss suggested that this demise has been coming at us like a roaring freight train. A family, a company, or nation cannot keep spending beyond its means without suffering consequences. It is illogical that we need to spend money in order to get out of debt. Like ancient Rome, who tried to entertain its citizenry by bread and circuses, while it spent itself into oblivion. The Chinese, economically in better shape than we are because of the industrial base we have given them, have guaranteed 15% of our national debt. The foolishness of the government in thinking it can spend itself out of debt by printing more "funny money" will bring hideous economic slavery to this nation. When nothing backs up the currency, it becomes worth nothing.

Over the past several months, the world's economy has struggled, and economists are divided about how soon we may see a recovery. However, Richard Ritenbaugh exposes what is really happening: In the name of turning the economy around, the government is destroying American capitalism.

John Ritenbaugh reiterates that demography is destiny. Population trends become reliable trends of future national consequences. Population declines in Russia have lead President Vladimir Putin to propose stipends to couples for having children. Japan's population has declined so drastically that 50% of the productive force will be put out of commission by reason of age. Vance Packard has suggested that capitalism cannot succeed without an increasing population and a constant stimulus to buy more and more. Without a steady base of consumers, capitalism will die. Barack Obama, an avowed advocate of population control (i.e. abortion or murder) and a supporter of homosexuality and gay 'marriage' (a certain pathway to population decline), will usher in economic woes by systematically destroying the population. Abortion is a cancer, eating into the economic base of the nation. We do not have a debt crisis as much as a death crisis.

For centuries, Christians have anticipated the coming of the end-time Great Tribulation, prophesied by Jesus in Matthew 24. However, Charles Whitaker describes a historical great tribulation, comparing it to what has happened in the United States since the 1930s.

The specter of famine has again crept into the public consciousness with spiking prices on many of the world's staple crops. Richard Ritenbaugh probes the multiple causes for the most recent food shortages and explains the link between them and the Third Seal of Revelation 6.

The United States of America is a global economic colossus by any measure. However, the world's financial winds seem to be changing. David Grabbe points out the emergence of powerful Middle Eastern concerns and Muslim banking practices that threaten America's economic clout.

Philosophers and ethicists, steeped in humanism, shoot wide of the truth in answering, 'Who is my neighbor?' Charles Whitaker explains that the Bible reveals the answer to this big moral question, as well as providing sensible guidelines on the finer details of Christian charity.

Predicting economic activity is about as tricky as forecasting the weather. Nevertheless, David Grabbe, citing recent financial news items, posits that the stage is set for economic instability around the world in the short term.

Members of God's church are required to give offerings during God's holy days (Deuteronomy 16:16), and we are told to give as we are able (verse 17). Both we and God will get more out of our offerings, especially spiritually, when we plan our giving.

China seems to be the present media-darling among nations, as news shows, magazines, and reports of all kinds tout its emerging greatness. However, David Grabbe shows that behind its economic successes are latent weaknesses that are set to converge soon.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh: During its approach to a mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey on May 6, 1937, the German dirigible Hindenburg, filled with hydrogen, went up in flames in less than a minute. ...

With populations around the world in decline, how will governments and businesses maintain the present standard of living? Charles Whitaker reveals that their solution, hinted at in the sudden surge in biotechnology, resides in technology discovering a brave new world.

The numbers do not lie—birthrates are declining. But what are governments planning to do about this imminent problem? Charles Whitaker examines the two main proposals, concluding that both are wrongheaded. Sidebars address why demography is important and the work of two famous demographers, Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich.

What are the causes—moral, social, and technological—behind the new demographic realities? Perhaps more importantly, what will be their consequences? Charles Whitaker spotlights the value of children to society—one that is increasingly ignored in this age of materialism.

John Ritenbaugh, reflecting upon escalating energy prices, urges caution and self-control in spending and taking on debt. If the supply of oil should be drastically cut, all vital services would shut down, and our quality of life would deteriorate. In 1971, the U.S. reached the state of "peak oil" (when supply could no longer keep up with demand), forcing it to become increasingly oil-dependent. As the world industrializes, the demand for oil will quickly outstrip the total available supply (possibly to occur in November 2005). The rising cost of this dwindling resource presages the destruction of Babylon, the hub of the world's economy (Revelation 18:8-20) Christians need to exercise diligence to "know the state of our flocks," acquiring economic stability by submitting to God's counsel, sacrificing now before outside forces usurp our economic substance. Responsible economists admonish us to 1) avoid new debt and 2) get liquid (save). We cannot afford to do nothing.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, most thought the world would come together, but that has not been the case. In fact, America and Europe have been steadily moving away from each other politically, economically, and culturally. What impact will this have on our understanding of biblical prophecy?

Even though the march of globalism seems irresistible, tribalism is rearing its head in many parts of the globe. Charles Whitaker also shows that tribalism played a major rolei n Israel's history of rebellion.

Globalism is not just an economic phenomenon, but it is also a strong political and military movement—and America's military gives it its teeth! Charles Whitaker provides historical background the America's warrior culture and how it is used today.

In this keynote address of the 2000 Feast of Tabernacles, John Ritenbaugh, drawing on descriptions in Amos 2, suggests that those entrusted with leadership (power within the community, power within the nations) are taking advantage of their positions, metaphorically raping those who have no power. Most notably, an American president, who for the sake of his own personal ambition, hoping to remove the stains of his personal sins from the consciousness of people worldwide, attempted to broker an obscene Middle Eastern oil deal, artificially cutting the supply in order to make prices rise, thereby inflicting economic hardship on the backs of the powerless, making them serfs or slaves to the federal government (I Samuel 8:17) The Feast of Tabernacles depicts a time when all this kind of self-indulgent chicanery will come to a permanent halt.

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